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Gateau Basque (custard Tart From The Pays Basque)

Ingredients & Directions


160 g Butter (5 2/3 oz) 2 dl Creme patissiere (7 fl oz)
160 g Sugar (5 2/3 oz) 1 Egg yolk mixed with 1 tb
2 Eggs — milk
240 g Flour (8 1/2 oz) Butter for the tin
1 ts Baking powder Flour for the tin
1 ts Orange flower water

EQUIPMENT
1 Cake tin, about 18cm/7in Piping bag
— diameter, 5cm/2in deep

Using a bowl and whisk, beat the butter until smooth; add the sugar
and beat for 3 minutes. Still beating, add first one egg, then the
other and finally beat in the flour, baking powder and orange flower
water. The mixture should be very smooth.

Preheat the oven to 200 oC / 400 oF.

Butter the inside of the cake tin and sprinkle with flour. Turn over
the tin and tap out the excess flour. Fill the piping bag with some
of the egg-sugar-…-mixture. Starting from the outside and working
inwards, pipe the mixture into a spiral so that the bottom of the tin
is entirely covered, with no gaps between the spirals.

Carefully spoon the creme patissiere into the centre of the tin,
spread it out slightly, but leave at least 2 cm / 3/4 in uncovered
all round the edge of the tin.

Continue to pipe spirals from the outside inwards, piping one on top
of the other, so that the creme patissiere is complerely enclosed on
all sides by the egg-sugar-…-mixture.

Brush the top of the tart with the egg yolk-milk-mixture, score a
lattice pattern with a fork and cook in the preheated oven for 45
minutes.

Leave to cool, then unmould on to a wire rack.

Serving

Accompanied by some home-made jam or, better still, redcurrant jelly.

(Albert and Michel Roux, The Roux brothers, French country cooking, M
Papermac, 1992, ISBN 0-333-57670-5)

Yields
8 servings